Blue lawsuit

     The innovative Cirque du Soleil bought Blue Man Group last week. As a fan of both ensembles, it seems a natural pairing, and sent me back over times I've written about Blue Man Group — in this one I presciently mention their eventual purchaser, in describing a particularly daft lawsuit.  It was a time when the column filled a page, and I've left in the subheadings. Afterward I'll let you know what happened with the case.

OPENING SHOT . . .

     Silly me. Over the years, I have endured countless horrors at the Lyric Opera of Chicago — been menaced by several dragons; seen doomed lovers sealed within a tomb; witnessed the lips of a harmless bird catcher sealed with a padlock, and even watched, aghast, as Satan himself emerged, singing, from the fiery pits of hell.
     And I never sued them. Not once.
     Dumb.
     Meanwhile James Srodon of California attends just one performance of the Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theatre and files a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court claiming that their "Esophagus Cam" was shoved down his throat, knocking out fillings, damaging his windpipe and of course causing psychological distress.
     Now I've attended several Blue Man Group performances and have my own issues with their show, mainly that it ain't drama. People act like it's a play because it takes place in a theater, but it's not. It's entertainment, part Cirque du Soleil, part concert, part magic show. So long as that's clear, Blue Man Group is energetic, loud, clever fun. Duping the audience is part of the thrill.
     One highlight was a version of the Esophagus Cam: A member of the audience was invited onstage and then zipped into a canvas body bag while one Blue Man recorded the proceeding with a video camera. The sack was then dragged backstage — we follow the action on screen —where it was loaded onto a truck, driven away and, eventually, hurled off a cliff.
     By then, it dawned on the audience that they were not watching a man actually being murdered in real time, but a prank involving an unseen cutaway to a pre-filmed segment. The kidnapped audience member actually slipped back into his seat.
     At least one hopes they realized it. If anyone called the cops — "Oh my gosh, I just came from Blue Man Group, and they killed somebody!" — I'm not aware of it.
     Srodon was singled out for a similar bit. The Blue Men gathered around him and pretended  — emphasize pretended — to shove a camera down his throat.
     Now I wasn't there, so perhaps they slipped up, in a frenzy brought on by toxic blue-paint poisoning, and really did pry open Srodon's jaws and, as he claims, shoved a paint-and-food-befouled camera down his throat.
     Perhaps he truly is a victim of assault who needs our cherished legal system to deliver redress for his suffering.
     Or maybe — and frankly, I'm putting all my chips down on this — the Blue Men have done this bit 50,000 times over the last two decades, and were they in the practice of actually shoving cameras down patrons' throats, well, we'd have heard about it by now. Maybe it is a well-done illusion and Srodon, 65, a sensitive soul, was overwhelmed. A judge will decide, sadly.

LEVITATION, ESP, BIGFOOT, UFOS . . .

     There are two important lessons in this lawsuit against the Blue Man Group for a stage trick.
     First, as much as I admire lawyers generally — my wife is a lawyer — this is the sort of lawsuit that exposes the profession to shame and undermines the idea of law as a desirable part of society. This type of lawsuit just hands ammunition to big insurance company hirelings working to further restrict the ability of the truly harmed to receive compensation.
     Second, this sort of thing also ruins life for the rest of us. It is a big reason we live in the padded, homogenized, vacuum-sealed, fenced-off, gelded, oversafe, professional-driver-closed-course, do-not-try-this-at-home world we live in.
     You can't ride a merry-go-round anymore without being herded past a legal disclaimer as long as the Magna Carta, informing you that this is a ride that revolves and goes up and down, that you will be exposed to equine wooden figures but that no actual horses were harmed in their creation, and pregnant women, the fantastically obese, the motion sensitive, equinophobes and those allergic to calliope music should not participate.
     I'm surprised we have any entertainments at all. Most of the animals have already been exiled from circuses by fanatics, and I'm sure clowns are next. "Mr. Binky did knowingly aim and discharge a seltzer bottle in the direction of plaintiff Henry Prudock, exposing him to a stream of cold carbonated water, which wettened him, and drew the mocking laughter of his fellow audience members . . ."
     Second, consider Srodon's belief that the camera was actually jammed down his throat. I am sure he is sincere, and this genuine conviction should remind us just how suggestible people really are.
     It must be important to some part of the collective human ego that we ignore this obvious reality—to flatter ourselves, I suppose. So important that we prefer to embrace the existence of nosy visiting motherships from distant galaxies rather than entertain the possibility that our planetmates are a bunch of gullible dopes, dithering and pliable, soft-minded and open to all sorts of delusions, mirages, misapprehensions, panics and fantasies.
     That is, when they're not outright lying . . .
     Yes, humanity's ability to fall for anything has value — we wouldn't have magic shows, time-share condos or religion otherwise. But the downside is that we automatically assume that the witnesses really saw the criminal, that the testimony is not the product of brain cramp, that the lady was really sawn in half and replaced by a tiger.
     I hate to involve myself in legal proceedings, but if the Blue Man Group is looking for an expert witness, I offer myself. I will testify, under oath and on penalty of perjury, that people are, in the main, morons, and that James Srodon is definitely a person. The jury can draw their own conclusions.

               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 27, 2008

    While the filing of the lawsuit was reported everywhere, the result was reported nowhere, as far as I could tell — a common lapse in journalism. In 2013, when another patron sued Blue Man Group after he was hit by a foam ball, the San Jose Mercury News caught up with Sroden's former lawyer.
     ‘The matter was settled for nominal dollars,’ Antonio Romanucci said. “I eventually withdrew from the case.”

You can look here soon for the water that used to be in your basement

     When I visited the new McCook Reservoir, I wasn’t exactly happy to be welcomed by rain pelting down in big summertime drops. I had brought my steel-toed boots but no jacket and no umbrella.
     But the rain was appropriate, considering that rain is what this is all about: the 109 miles of deep tunnel, the 10-billion-gallon reservoir this hole in the rock will someday become part of; all so the water that falls from the sky can find its way into a treatment plant without first detouring through your basement, a task that is getting harder for two reasons: the soot we put into the sky and the pavement we slap over the ground.
     “Forty percent of Cook County is nonpermeable surface, which means water can’t absorb where it falls,” said Mariyana T. Spyropoulos, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, who accompanied me on a tour of the site tucked between the Stevenson Expressway and the Sanitary and Ship Canal in Bedford Park.
     Here I interrupted her, incredulous. I’ve heard a lot of stark statistics about Cook County. But 40 percent? How can that be?
     “We have concrete,” she said. “We have asphalt. Rainwater cannot absorb into it. Yes, 40 percent. Combine that with the fact that we have climate change, we have more intense rainstorms. In the last 10 years we’ve had three hundred-year rainstorms.

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Just drumming is not enough to make you Blue

     Blue Man Group, the popular and increasingly-pervasive trio of mute drummers putting on a surreal show, were purchased last week by Cirque du Soleil, a marriage of like minds if ever there were.  I saw Blue Man Group when it opened on Broadway, and again a time or two over the years. In 2011, I stopped by to watch them audition future Blue Men.

     By 9 a.m., 10 men are standing in a steady drizzle outside the Briar Street Theatre on Halsted Street, waiting for their chance.
     "Cold, rainy, windy and damp enough to annoy you," says a 20-year-old with the Hollywood-ready name of Nathaniel Hawkins, first in line, having driven in from Cedar Falls, Iowa, the night before and been here since 7:30 a.m. "I always wanted to give this a shot if the chance came up."
     "The chance"—the first in Chicago since June—refers to the open auditions last Tuesday for Blue Man Group, the wildly popular mix of music, vaudeville and social commentary.
     If you think of Blue Man Group as three bald guys painted blue stuffing Cap'n Crunch in their mouths, you're behind the times. That was 20 years ago, when Chris Wink, Philip Stanton and Matt Goldman created the show "to celebrate the human spirit through music, science, art and theater."
     Now Blue Man Productions has some 600 employees worldwide with about 60 full-time Blue Men performing in seven cities: Boston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Berlin, Tokyo, New York, where it has played for 20 years, and at Briar Street, where it has run continually for 15. Not quite the Disney Co., but a long way from busking in Central Park.
     The Briar Street lobby is crowded with men, and a few women. (Two females have become Blue Men). They have driven from as far away as Nebraska. An acting professor at Notre Dame canceled classes to be here.
     Those waiting to be called sit on the floor, filling out forms, many drumming with drumsticks they brought with them, or with the flats of their hands on their chests.
     "I love music," said John Curulewski, 24, of Plainfield. "I want to play drums." Being a Blue Man would be "pretty sweet, it seems like a good job: be kinda crazy and drum."
     Were it that easy. Playing drumheads splashing brightly colored liquids is only part of the job, and the five-level audition process begins with neither craziness nor drumming, but an earnest two-minute interview, sitting in salon chairs facing casting coordinator Tascha Van Auken, who glances at each resume, makes small talk - "So how far is Plainfield?" - then asks about acting experience. Those with none find themselves quickly, but with notable gentleness, thanked for coming and sent on their way.
     "If you went out and got some acting work, we would totally be into it," she tells one. "It doesn't make sense to put you through the process now."
     Those who make it past Van Auken—and most do—are put, five at a time, through a pair of tough non-verbal acting exercises.
     Someone in the room has "a deep sadness" within them, explains Tim Aumiller, director of casting. "You have an opportunity right now to look at us once, just once, and you have to determine who in this room has this deep sadness.
     This weeds out those whose talents are limited to drumming, and the irony is, that test is next. The two skills just don't compare.
     "Almost anyone can learn to be the kind of drummer we need them to be," says Aumiller. "But it can take years to teach someone to be an actor."
     Those who make it this far stand, one at a time, at a drum pad on the Briar Street stage, facing Jeff Quay, the music director.
     "Track my dynamics," he tells one hopeful. "I get softer, you get softer." They mirror each other. "Excellent. Let's keep it going - you track my tempo changes."
     In the audience are current Blue Men Matt Ramsey and Nick Rush, 23, the one actor picked out of 150 auditioning last June.
     "Once I got to training, one of the directors said 90 percent why you get the job is the moment you walk in the door," says Rush. "You can just tell: He's a Blue Man."
     Of the 164 would-be Blue Men who tried last Tuesday, 18 were called back for more intensive exercises and auditions, leading to final trials, in makeup, in the weeks to come. All to get . . . how many new Blue Men?
     "One would be good," says Aumiller, noting that some city auditions yield none.
     A final thought, from hours watching this success funnel, with 164 earnest aspirants pushing themselves into the wide end and one, maybe, emerging from the spout:
     The American dream is that if you have ambition, if you truly believe in yourself and try, really hard, you will succeed, with a bit of luck. And that is sometimes true. But not if you're only a drummer, and what they're really looking for are actors who can drum.

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 25, 2011

Feeling blue

     Blue Man Group, the popular and increasingly-pervasive trio of mute drummers putting on a surreal show, was purchased last week by Cirque du Soleil, a marriage of like minds if ever there were. While I've seen and enjoyed Blue Man Group over the years, I was also ambivalent about them, as reflected in this first piece about it, which ran almost 20 years ago. I'll share a couple more blue stories—on Tuesday, a daft 2008 lawsuit against Blue Man, and on Thursday a visit to an audition at the Briar Street Theatre. 

     In today's column, I left out the best line. When my friend—actually my editor at Doubleday—said he's rather see Blue Man than Medea, I slapped my palm to my forehead and said,  sarcastically, "Oh Bill, let me savor this moment: the guy editing my books would rather see three men painted blue stuffing Captain Crunch into their mouths than experience a cornerstone of Western drama for the past 2500 years. Is that the case?" It was. I probably didn't put that in because I didn't want to treat him too roughly. I needn't have bothered; shortly thereafter we parted ways after an argument, me drifting steadily downwards toward the nether regions of publishing, he ascending toward the presidency of Doubleday. Just as well. We were an ill fit.

     Once I forced my wife to go see Samuel Beckett's dark masterpiece "Waiting for Godot," performed by the National Theatre of Ireland. At the end of the minimalist classic, she turned to me and said: "That was so depressing!"
     Maybe the humor of her answer isn't immediately apparent. Imagine taking somebody to the circus and having them turn to you, shocked, and say, "My word, but there are clowns here!"
    "It's Beckett!" I wanted to scream. "It's supposed to be depressing! That's the entire point!"
     I feel like I'm in an ever-shrinking minority of people who love a really good tragedy. The darker the better. My idea of fun is sitting down with my battered copy of Death of a Salesman and re-reading Willy Loman's funeral.
     Tragedy is out of fashion, however. Most people have lost their stomach for sorrow in their entertainments. Focus groups and market research have ruined us, creating a nation of babies who demand refunds if the hero dies at the end or if bad things happen to good people.
     The movies are hardly worth addressing. When was the last time a movie ended on a down note? "Gone With the Wind," maybe? I still can't get over the imperial troops being defeated by a bunch of teddy bears at the end of "Return of the Jedi." Imagine how much more effective that movie would have been if the last scene had been Princess Leia's arm being zupped up in Jabba the Hutt's slobbering mouth. Talk about impact.
     But back to theater, specifically, the "Blue Man Group."
     Now, I have nothing against the "Blue Man Group" per se. I saw it when it opened in New York years ago and found it amusing, tolerable stuff. They drum. They splash paint and toss marshmallows. It's like a high school cafeteria.
     But I felt too guilty watching "Blue Man Group" to really like it. Maybe because I was in a theater. Being there for that kind of show seemed like trespassing, or supporting the manic slapstick that will keep theaters in business in the future, after people have entirely lost their taste for shows where actors speak actual words.
     It's getting worse. Look at what else has been packing them into theaters: "Beauty and the Beast." And don't even get me started on "Lord of the Dance."
     Sometimes I wonder if we'd get tragedies at all onstage if it weren't for certain actors having pangs of conscience and insisting. Would the Goodman be putting on these lovely Eugene O'Neill epics if Brian Dennehy didn't feel the need to periodically atone for his Hollywood potboilers?
     And at least my wife went to "Godot." Once I went to New York just to see Diana Rigg in "Medea." I knew better than to try to get anyone to go with me, but, at the last moment, in New York, I broke down and tried to persuade a friend to tag along to the Greek tragedy.
     "No way," he said.
     OK, I countered -- I must have been really lonely -- how about if I pay for your ticket?
     "No," he said. "I'm just not up to seeing 'Medea.' "
     "OK," I said, "what is it you feel like seeing?"
     "Blue Man Group," he said.
      I saw "Medea" alone.
                                      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 2, 1997

Books on the nightstand: the Patrick O'Brian novels

     Boars are conservative.    
     "Deeply conservative," in fact, according to Patrick O'Brian. "Devoted to the beaten track."
     Aren't we all?  Most of us anyway. Humans as well as tusked swine.
     That perceptive observation comes near the beginning of The Nutmeg of Consolation, the 14th book of what are known as O'Brian's "Aubrey/Maturin novels," historical fiction of British naval life set 200 years ago, at the time of the Napoleonic wars.
    And yes, I've read the previous 13. Or at least listened to them on audiobooks, which is approximately the same thing.
    "Aubrey" is Captain Jack Aubrey, tall and blond, dashing, if perpetually overweight and florid, as human a hero as ever raised a cutlass. "Maturin" is his "particular friend," naval physician, natural philosopher, Irish nationalist and, let's not forget, highly effective secret agent, despite a tendency to tumble off ships and into dungeons.
     It shouldn't work. Just setting down the details above sounds trite, as if I'm describing some musty maritime cliche. But I have not only read the previous baker's dozen books, but done so almost daily, one after another, over the past six months, and as someone with a highly evolved reflex to reject fiction for being predictable, hackneyed, cliched, or just not good enough, O'Brian's books are none of these.
      The bit about the boar is an illustration why. Whatever is going on in the books, whether boars are being hunted by Maturin, shipwrecked with 156 crew mates on a deserted South China sea island, or battles being fought yardarm-to-yardarm, sails raised, legs amputated or pudding cooked, it is done so with a wealth of well-researched detail and veracity that sings off the page. I've literally never heard a false note.
     The characters are real. His pig killed, Maturin absent-mindedly wipes his hand on his white jacket, immediately fearing for the reaction of the gloriously-named servant Preserved Killick, "an awkward, slab-sided creature," a maestro of the muttered complaint, with his own distinctive way of speaking and a habit of beginning sentences with "Which."
    "Which there ain't no stern galley, sir, now we've been degraded to a sixth grade," Killick cries "with malignant triumph" in The Ionian Mission. "Stern galleries is for our betters, and I must toil and moil away in the dark."
     Yet somehow Killick, with his fetish for cleanliness and rank, is endearing, both to the readers and to his supposedly superior officers. Maturin is terrified that in gutting the boar he soiled his jacket, creating more work for the over-burdened Killick. Maturin tries to sort it out in his own mind as he heads toward his inevitable dressing down.
    "It wasn't even Killick was his servant with a servant's right," he thinks, dreading his encounter.
     "A servant's right" could support a book on it's own, and one of the series' many joys are the lesser, able-bodied seamen characters, their brief exchanges and rituals, superstitions and philosophies. Yet never does it become routine. A lesser writer, penning his 13th book, would have had Killick upbraid the doctor his characteristic "high, shrill, penetrating voice." But Killick doesn't. He looks at the doctor's mirthless light blue eyes, his general disorder from his boar hunt, and uncomplainingly goes about his business, for a change.
    O'Brian knows that human beings are not clockwork. They might have qualities, but they also diverge from them, and one of the truest things about the books are how his characters don't always behave as they're usually do. Aubrey, devoted to his Sophie, still finds himself fathering a child out of wedlock and almost two. Maturin, the man of science, nevertheless becomes an addict of laudanum, a form of opium, and his mental gymnastics rationalizing and hiding his slavery rings completely true. Diana Villiers, Maturin's love interest, is sometimes free-spirited and careless, sometimes devoted.
     Those characteristics that do endure start to develop a power. About the fifth time Aubrey describes Lord Nelson once asking him to be so kind as to pass the salt, the vignette takes on a deeper meaning, one it hadn't possessed before, speaking to the desperate way we cling to our brushes with fame.
     At some point I need to express my gratitude to my older son Ross. I had seen the movie version, "Master and Commander," with Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey, and loved it extremely—like the books, it really is a disquisition in leadership. Maybe a decade ago, Ross gave me the novel as a birthday present, but I never got around to reading it until now, really just to stop him from holding that up as a lapse in paternal devotion. It took a few pages to gel, but once it did, I was hooked. Reading O'Brian has embroidered the mundane routine considerably. 
     I don't believe you should recommend a work of art while spoiling it, so I won't give away the surprises, except to say the best moment in the first 13 books comes in The Reverse of the Medal when Aubrey finds himself convicted of stock manipulation—he can be a dunce when it comes to his landward finances—and sentenced to an hour of humiliation in the pillory.  Tears in my eyes.
     The action ranges from Boston to Australia, from Sweden to the Cape of Good Hope, from Antarctica to the equator. There are schemes and traitors, alehouse whores and wheezing admirals. The exchange of letters, the constant consumption of alcohol, the crude medicine, the closeness to the natural world. Some books end in epic battles, others quietly. There is never a sense of repetition, and little crude coincidence—one almost-too-timely rescue, the in-the-nick-of-time arrival of a Polynesian outrigger in The Far Side of the World when Aubrey and Maturin were literally paddling together in the trackless ocean. Then again, it wouldn't do to have Aubrey and Maturin drown in Book 10, would it?
     I won't belabor the point. I've listened to most of the books on tape—a fine alternative to thought, to brooding on the ominous news of the day. I finally joined Audible to do it, since the library didn't carry the full 20 books—O'Brian, an enigmatic figure, died writing the 21st.  I can recommend them wholeheartedly to anyone, particularly during our own difficult days, when men of heroism and backbone, and a bit of escapism are not only welcome, but necessary. 

Rahm Emanuel, the New York Daily News, and "outrage porn"

Sculpture by Damien Hirst, (Palazzo Grassi, Venice)

     The voicemail system at the Chicago Sun-Times takes messages up to 6 minutes long. I know this because some guy phones me late at night and fills up three or four messages.
     He’s been calling for years. I used to listen. Now I dump it the moment I hear his opening sneer: “Mister Steinberg, your ‘column’ is the typical li. . . .” Some people speak so you can hear both italics — a drawl dripping sarcasm — and quote marks: an incredulous stutter-step. Delete, delete, delete.
     While I’m all for hearing other perspectives, “you stink,” isn’t exactly a road map for self-improvement.
     Then again, a guy doesn’t leave 20 minutes of grumbling abuse for my benefit, but for his. It must satisfy him somehow.
     There’s a term, “outrage porn,” that seems a handy concept for understanding much that passes for discourse lately. Like porn porn, outrage porn offers up not real life but a fun-house-mirror parody of real life. Life distorted to reflect the users’ fantasies. Outrage porn serves up pat little vignettes of indignation to get the reader excited, leading to the release of full-throated condemnation. Unlike porn porn, outrage porn is not a private vice but one you invite your friends to share.

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Deep dish

Burt's pizza

     Chicago didn't invent pizza. But it did invent deep dish pizza. In 1943, at Pizzeria Uno, supposedly—documentation is sketchy, though nobody else claims the honor.
     Uno's is still around, though I never go there unless I'm squiring somebody from out of town. The cornmeal crust at Uno's, well, I understand there are people who like it, and while I'll eat it if it's set before me, I don't go out of my way to have it set before me, if you catch my drift.
     Lou Malnati's is excellent. It's the tomato sauce; pure and perfect. Their deep dish with spinach and mushrooms, on their Buttercrust crust. When we order pizza, it's what we order, unless my wife insists on indulging her passion for thin crust, which I agree to do because fair's fair and, besides, I know I won't eat much of it.
     But Lou Malnati's, though it styles itself as "the absolute best" is not, in fact, the best deep dish pizza the city has to offer (hmm, now I'm starting to see why they don't advertise. Candor and good business sense are not friends). That distinction goes to Burt's Place, in Morton Grove. Burt's offers up a caramelized, almost burnt pizza that is beyond words.
     And if you are saying, "But Burt's closed in 2015" you are right. It did close in 2015. And Burt Katz, its quirky, not always pleasant owner of 26 years, died the next year. One interview I put off a little too long.
     But Burt's re-opened in March, without Burt And I went back there as part of a pizza fest my oldest son insisted upon before he exiled himself to the pizza wasteland of Los Angeles. We went to Chicago Pizza Oven and Grinder, where I don't even order pizza (salad, Mediterranean bread and, if I'm feeling decadent, a meatball grinder). Then Lou's, ordered in. Then Burt's.
     Third time's the charm.
     The Burt's pizza was so good it made me happy. Briefly at least. Happy to be there and eat it. Happy afterward on the way home, just that something so damn good exists and the public has access to it. Not so brief, now that I think about it. I'm still a little happy, thinking about my next visit to Burt's.
     At the old Burt's, you had to order your pizza a day ahead of time, which made going there difficult. The new Burt's has put in an extra oven, so ordering ahead on weekends is not necessary. I spoke with one of the new owners, and he seemed ... I don't want to say "struggling," so let's say, "working hard" to keep the place humming along. It's hard to run a restaurant; harder still when you are learning on the fly. Nor was it as crowded on a Friday night as the only restaurant offering the best deep dish pizza in Chicago ought to be.
      What I'm saying is, go to Burt's. And so will I. And between the two of us, we'll keep the place afloat. In the meantime, if there is a better deep dish pizza in Chicago, I'd like to hear about it though I'll tell you right now: I don't believe you. It's Burt's.